All About the Fans: SVNS Host Broadcaster Sunset+Vine Talks Cameras and Bringing the Festival Atmosphere to Viewers at Home

All about the fans: SVNS host broadcaster Sunset Vine talks cameras and bringing the festival atmosphere to viewers at home By Heather McLean

Monday, June 24, 2024 - 08:15

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Where the magic happens crew from Sunset Vine, the host broadcaster for SVNS, in the VT area for the Madrid Grand Final of the refreshed SVNS season

Sunset Vine has worked with World Rugby since 2019 as its host broadcaster for sevens rugby. Last year it was tasked with bringing the new brand of sevens SVNS to TV screens. This meant reflecting the bright, fun, international festival of sport that the new SVNS was to become in the broadcast.

Sunset Vine has worked closely with World Rugby to bring the overhauled SVNS competition and in-stadium atmosphere to the broadcast itself. Speaking to SVG Europe, Sunset Vine's managing director, David Tippet, says: We are just part of a team of people. It's World Rugby and AE Live; the three of us all contribute to this. One of the areas where AE Live has been really good has been the onscreen look and feel, and that's come in with a lot of focus on split screen as well.

One of the things Steve [Jamieson, World Rugby's executive producer and director of live events] led is this sense of trying to bring real energy to the coverage, so the graphics are all really dynamic. They look amazing, but there's a lot of information and there's a lot of constantly changing information. I think AE Live brought all their expertise in cricket to SVNS, and there's just a flow of information happening that's targeting the audience that's hungry for data and background information, all that sort of stuff.

We've also got a real focus on capturing the fan atmosphere inside the stadium. So we've got a dedicated camera that's there just to cover the fans. It's brilliant

He continues: We're also doing lots of things at the same time within the coverage. We've come up with a variety of different split screen or picture in picture devices to do that. So for example, we'll talk to coaches in-game, but we are showing them talking and the action at the same time. The games are so short, you don't want to miss anything. I think it feels like a very fresh way of doing sport.

We talk to players once they've been subbed and they're sitting on the bench and they're trying to get their breath back, he goes on. Suddenly they have a headset put on them and the commentators are chatting to them in-game and finding out how they're feeling about coming off, all that sort of stuff. So it's really interesting.

Then there's the television match official (TMO) decisions where you're showing a couple of live shots and the replays at the same time. There's a lot of things that we've built that allow us to do lots of things at the same time, which I think is really dynamic and really brings energy to it.

Fans getting ready for SVNS in Perth in January this year

All about the fans

Another aspect of what Sunset Vine has bought to the production is about bringing that in-stadium atmosphere that the fans themselves are creating, to the broadcast.

Tippet explains: We've also got a real focus on capturing the fan atmosphere inside the stadium. So we've got a dedicated camera that's there just to cover the fans.

It's brilliant, he continues on the fan cam. You go to places like Hong Kong or Perth was another place, where you've just got people who turn up in the crazy outfits and they're having a great time, but also they're passionate as well. It's having a camera that isn't worried about whether it's going to miss something on the pitch. It means that you've got that ability to actually capture people and their reactions as a try is taking place, rather than after a try is taking place, so you sort of see a lot of things you wouldn't see otherwise, but you also see the atmosphere and the colour of the occasion.

We want to show replays and we want to show great live shots and we want to talk to people and we just want to do a lot of things. So rather than just do it all sequentially, we just want to do it all at the same time

Sunset Vine has also provided is a roaming camera operator, who is able to get outside the stadium to see what fun fans are having on the various activities that are available to visitors.

We've added a camera that roams around outside the stadium. This is another thing that's different this year from a World Rugby standpoint; the activations that are happening outside.

Gearing up for SVNS in Hong Kong in April

Tippet elaborates on why the activities outside of the stadium are important for the broadcast: So some of the seven tournaments have always done this, but others less. World Rugby is trying to bring [each SVNS event] up to the same sort of standard of things to do if you go and spend a day at the SVNS. So it's not just sitting in the stands watching rugby, it's the swimming pool out on the concourse, or the DJ, or the food court or whatever it is. They're trying to bring culture and entertainment in, so the audience is coming to attend more of a festival than a sports tournament.

We wanted to capture all of that, so we've added cameras that can go and do that. That's technically a little bit trickier for us, because we go to different places where the RF capabilities might be different. So we've come up with a number of different solutions for how to [make this roaming camera work]. Some is pure RF, where we've put RF coverage in a lot of areas away from the stadium [so it works at distance]. On others, it's more of a hybrid kind of ENG, which we can quickly record and transfer into the EVS system.

He adds on providers of the technologies for all

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/all-about-the-fans-svns-host-...
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